Florida: Calling All Deaf Advocates!

[Alysse Rasmussen]

Thank you so much.

ASL is a real "hit or miss" issue at UCF.
For example, the schools of business and engineering accept it. (Actually,
when a couple of my high school students applied a few years ago they were told
those schools don't really care what you take as long as you've had something
:-D).

But as weird as it may seem, Communicative Disorders will NOT accept it
(according to some of my students) -- go figure!

My information on Education is iffy ... someone told me that ONLY special ed
students could opt for ASL.  But I'd thought ALL ed students could.

What the ASL people at UCF are trying to do is get "equal" treatment
throughout.  I mean sure, if you're major is Latin American Studies, they're not
trying to say you should take ASL (lets get real ... LOL).  But if the purpose is
to teach you about cultures and communities, connections, communication, and
comparisons ... well, geeze, ASL can do that as well as ANY language.  (And I'm
VERY proud of myself right now, cause I usually manage to leave out one of the
ACTFL 5C's ... I got them all tonight :-D.)

Pam Rea wrote a really nice explanation of the specifics for this particular
issue (she works at UCF and VCC).  Here's her info:

The UCF Faculty Senate Committee will be meeting Thursday, February 26, 2004,
at 4:00p, Key West Room in the Student Union.  A resolution to allow American
Sign Language to satisfy the foreign language credit in the College of Health
and Public Affairs (COHPA) will be presented.

We (Deaf students, ASL students, and ASL instructors) are requesting your
support in this effort.  UCF is one of two Florida state universities that does
not allow ASL to satisfy foreign language requirements.  Year after year
efforts have been made to have ASL satisfy the foreign language requirement.  Year
after year these efforts have been unsuccessful. Help us to make it happen this
year!

We all know that ASL is a language in its own right. It is the language of
the Deaf Community. Come as a show of support that UCF should adopt this
resolution and allow American Sign Language to satisfy the foreign language
requirement for COHPA.  The more people that are there, the more show of support will
be presented to the UCF Faculty Senate Committee.  We want to encourage members
of the Deaf Community to come and "sign out" their support for ASL accepted
as a foreign langauge.

UCF Faculty Senate Committee meeting
Thursday, February 26
4:00p
Student Union, Key West Room

See you there!

In a message dated 2/23/2004 6:47:18 PM Eastern Standard Time,
kaylynnkathy at HOTMAIL.COM writes:
Here is a comment from someone I contacted who is retired from UCF faculty
(engineering dept, I believe).

"I must be mistaken for I thought that UCF has accepted ASL as a foreign
language.  Anyway, I have printed out your message, and will see that it
gets in the hands of our signers at church on Sunday."

While I can't go to the meeting (because I'm in another state!), the word is
spreading at least in the Orlando community.  Perhaps someone at my
acquaintance's church will attend the meeting.  (I didn't know there were
signers at his church!)

His comment, though, raises another question relative to this thread on the
list.  Is ASL accepted as a foreign language at UCF but NOT accepted as part
of a graduation requirement?  Is that the issue at hand here?

Kathy Hansen
Purdue doctoral student


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